A quarter century after 9/11, we’ve gone from ‘Never Forget’ to ‘Never Let Them Forget’

We’ll ask them because we do. We’ll ask them about fields and diamonds from Lewiston, Maine, to Los Angeles.

what do you remember Where were you when the planes hit the towers? What does 9/11 mean to you?

The answers to the questions change.

For most of the past 25 years, we’ve asked athletes to help remember the attack on our nation on September 11, 2001. Now we’re starting to ask a generation that can’t.

Many of the players who participated in the ceremonies were not around 25 years ago. Those born may not be old enough to have vivid memories of the older generation.

Still, they will stand along the sidelines and baselines in moments of silence, wearing commemorative badges and listening as the names and stories of 2001 are recalled. The NFL will be writing “Never Forget” in end zones across the country this weekend.

The reality is 25 years later, we move from “Never Forget” to “Never Let Them Forget”. We are moving from a time of memory to a time of learning.

My wife and I were recently driving home from a weekend trip to Washington DC when we passed the exit for the Flight 93 National Memorial. We quickly got off the freeway and drove nearly 20 miles of winding roads through the Laurel Highlands region to visit the crash site.

I wasn’t sure what to expect, but the scene was overwhelming. The monument is incredibly well done. It was quite crowded during our visit, perhaps because it was Labor Day and so close to the anniversary. As videos of the day played in the visitor center and park rangers wandered in and out answering questions about the day, I surveyed the demographics of the room and was struck by how many of the younger visitors didn’t have vivid memories of the event.

Time eventually does that to all the defining moments of the world. Every generation has one, whether it’s the assassination of John F. Kennedy or the attack on Pearl Harbor. Sports only provide a clear illustration of evolution.

Tom Brady was a 24-year-old backup quarterback when the planes hit the World Trade Center. He was early in his second NFL season and didn’t take the starting job until later that month. He’s now retired and carried all those Super Bowl rings with him into the broadcast booth, paving the way for league MVPs Patrick Mahomes and Josh Allen. They were both in kindergarten on 11.9. Brock Purdy and Trevor Lawrence were infants. Caleb Williams and CJ Stroud weren’t even born yet.

Similarly, most current major leaguers were children or not yet born when Mike Piazza hit that memorable home run at Shea Stadium 10 days after the attack. Someone has to explain to them why the crowd sounded different, that it was the first sporting event in New York after 9/11, and why the Piazza around the bases became a permanent image. A late September regular season home run is still being debated a quarter of a century later. They need to understand why.

That’s how this works. We inherit the responsibility of explanation.

We have to explain that the career numbers of baseball legends like Bob Feller and Ted Williams are not as impressive as they could have been because both sacrificed three years of their prime to go serve in World War II. Williams later lost two more seasons to the Korean War. Hank Greenberg entered the Army after winning his second MVP and losing three full years and parts of two more to the war. They are all American heroes who were also outstanding baseball players.

Legends have their stories woven into the fabric of the game. Preserving that rich history is easier than most American institutions because the sport is obsessed with origins. We draw numbers and hang banners and make statues. We rename roads and put names on stadium walls, celebrate anniversaries and invite old teams to cheer them on again.

Now, an entire generation of professional athletes has essentially gone through their entire careers since 9/11.

For years, the player’s question about that day produced stories. They remembered canceling practice or sitting in a college lecture hall watching TV. They called parents and other loved ones. They remembered the eerie sounds of the planeless silence in the sky and the uncertainty of whether the games were to be played that weekend. They may not have understood the gravity of the situation, but they certainly understood the desperation we all felt.

We now have the first generation coming of age without knowledge and without memories of their own, which perhaps makes ceremonies of remembrance more necessary than ever.

The scene at the New York Jets game on the 10th anniversary of 9/11. (Elsa / Getty Images)

The next generation hearing about 9/11 is doing so in an age of disinformation that didn’t exist 25 years ago. The same phone that shows the archive footage that morning, within a few swipes, offers a theory that insists that what they’re seeing isn’t real or isn’t telling the whole truth.

Social media has made history infinitely more accessible and vastly more dangerous to navigate. Conspiracy theories that once lived on the fringes are finding a new audience through algorithms. Artificial intelligence makes manipulating images, voices and videos easier than ever. Distance from the event creates a vacuum for alternative versions of the same story.

In the last few years, we’ve had athletes the question of whether Babe Ruth really existedinsist Michael Jackson is still alivedeny it people built the Egyptian pyramids and it questions the existence of space. Just this week, Dre Greenlaw of the San Francisco 49ers wondered if Antarctica is a lie and DK Metcalf of the Pittsburgh Steelers told our Jonathan Jones who he believes Antarctica is another world and that there is another civilization inside the Earth. Of course, there are also plenty of standard flat earth and moon landing conspiracies.

All of this makes the transition from remembering to learning about 9/11 so important. We who experienced that day have an obligation to preserve history. We know what we saw. The generation behind us must decide who to believe in what happened before they were here. That’s why ceremonies are still important.

Sports can’t learn the history of 9/11 in 60 seconds before kickoff, but there aren’t many settings left that can accomplish something on this scale. A history teacher can only explain the attacks to a class of 25 students, and a documentary can only reach those who seek it and decide to watch it. An NFL game has a captive audience of 70,000 in one building and millions more watching at home. He has the power to interrupt the party long enough to declare that this is important. A moment of silence is an invitation to learn history.

For 25 years we have asked athletes where they are. Soon there will be no one worth asking on the field. Then the responsibility shifts to those who were there.

When a player asks what the moment of silence is for, when a child asks why the stadium suddenly stopped moving, it’s our turn to answer.

Never to forget was our promise. Don’t let them forget is what we owe them.